Johnson Tsang

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Johnson Cheung-shing Tsang devotes 50 to 60 hours per week to creating his illusionistic ceramic sculptures, which run the gamut from lyrically beautiful to arrestingly thought provoking.

For Tsang, who was born in 1960 in Hong Kong and still lives there, sculpting is the language in which he can communicate his observations of the world. His porcelain sculptures are about relationships: the relationships among things, between humans and the things around them, and between humans themselves. Ultimately, they are about love, even when on the surface the subject matter might not seem to evoke “love.” To Tsang, love is at the root even of emotions perceived to be negative, such as fear.

Johnson Cheung-shing Tsang devotes 50 to 60 hours per week to creating his illusionistic ceramic sculptures, which run the gamut from lyrically beautiful to arrestingly thought provoking.

Many of Tsang’s pieces are elegant surrealistic representations of struggle—the tension of a bowl that “liquefies,” its edges splashing out; a person pulling off their face as if it is a shirt; babies in uniform—pieces that pose questions rather than providing answers. And yet there is serenity, also, in the smooth curves of a face, the delicate painting. Tsang pays careful attention to his craftsmanship, to ensuring that a piece captures the vision he held prior to its creation.

Tsang creates almost exclusively with clay. While he has sculpted whole pieces in other media, including stainless steel, and occasionally incorporates other materials into his pieces, he loves the feel of clay in his hands, and it is that material to which he inevitably returns. While the material itself is important, equally crucial is Tsang’s openness to being led by his own intuition: he allows himself to be guided by what he sees, dreams and feels. Teaching pottery to children, for example, renewed a child-like approach to seeing the world, and he applied that approach to creating art. And in turn, creating art has shifted how he observes the world around him.

Tsang’s desire to sculpt arose organically from his practice of drawing. Although he’d been drawing since the age of 4, he realized that he always saw the world in 3D, and drawing felt limiting to him: it didn’t allow him to communicate the totality of his observations, and his drawing was centered around reflecting what he observed. After his first pottery class in 1991, he was hooked on the possibilities that clay had to offer. At the time he took this class, he was a police officer. He eventually gave 13 years to that career before quitting to turn his full attention to sculpture. Years later, his wish remains that he stay healthy enough to keep making porcelain sculptures.

Tsang has won numerous awards for his work, including the Grand Prize in the 2012 Taiwan Ceramics Biennale, a Special Prize in the Korea Gyeonggi International Ceramix Biennale 2011 International Competition, and an Outstanding Workmanship Award in the Tea Ware by Hong Kong Potters Competition in 2007, among others. He also received The Secretary for Home Affairs’ Commendation from the Government of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region in 2009 for its outstanding achievements in international art events.

Johnson Tsang in his studio with his ceramic sculpture, titled A Painful Pot.

Johnson Tsang’s debut Australian solo exhibition, Little World, was held at Beinart Gallery in May 2019. This show, inspired by the inner child that informs much of Tsang’s work, continued the use of the expressive baby face motif that has appeared in many of Tsang’s prior works.

Interview with Johnson Tsang.

Please contact us if you would like to buy an original porcelain sculpture by Johnson Tsang or to be notified when we have new available art for sale.

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